Freedom Works, Glenn Beck, and Tea Party Radio Power in 2014

Freedom Works subscriptions with talk radio stars yielding more than just cash.

NOTHING HAS bedeviled Democrats in midterm elections more thoroughly than the juggernaut power of right-wing radio. In the 1990s, it helped lead to the hunting of Bill Clinton and impeachment, just as the first new media star, Matt Drudge, took power from traditional press. Technology has evened the playing field quite a bit and taken a lot of power away from the old talk radio platform, as Barack Obama’s candidacy and victories have shown.

But over the last months there’s been a shifting alliance from traditional paradigms and partnerships, with Freedom Works, as well as Tea Party Patriots, and the Heritage Foundation, getting in the grass roots radio game, which used to be owned by corporate media, but is now being fueled by powerful Tea Party inspired outsiders.

The national temperature never taken inside Tea Party nation, what this alliance ignores is what continues to make the Republican establishment very nervous.

The FreedomWorks-Beck relationship is just one example of a powerful and profitable alliance between the conservative movement’s most aggressive groups and the most popular radio hosts.

The details of the arrangements are little-known, but they have been lucrative for the recipients, and, in turn, have helped ensure that the groups get coveted airtime from hosts with a demonstrated ability to leverage their tens of millions of listeners to shape American politics. It’s an alliance that helped spawn the anti-establishment tea party and power Republicans to landslide victories in the 2010 midterms. It’s also exacerbated congressional gridlock by pushing a hard line on the budget, immigration and Obamacare, and it is roiling the Republican Party headed into critical midterm elections. [Politico]

An internal FreedomWorks memo shed light on the fundraising return yielded by the sponsorships. The memo “” presented to the group’s board and obtained and posted by Mother Jones magazine “” indicated that, during the first 11 months of 2012, the Beck sponsorship had yielded $860,000 in contributions, while the Limbaugh sponsorship had brought in $433,000. That’s less than 30 percent of the total the group paid to the broker who set up the sponsorships in 2012, according to its tax filings, though, to be sure, the sponsorships also helped the group engage activists who did not donate.

Democrats have nothing to compete with this outreach and never have. Back when I was dabbling in radio and became an expert on talk radio, I found out just how little the left understands radio’s reach and power to GOTV.

Today, Democrats use technology as a doctor uses a scalpel.

The difference is a non-emotional tactic versus a highly emotional, political primal scream, which may work in midterm elections, but will fall flat when the entire electorate is engaged.

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I have to wonder….the demographic that listens to squawk radio is old…and I mean OLD, white, overwhelmingly male and as bigoted a mob as have ever existed. Yeah limpy and handjobity can fire up the wackos…but that is an ever shrinking pool of wackos. They are dieing off…thankfully. And revenues are in the toilet…..if you listen all you hear are public service announcements, gold scams, impotence D.rs and Testosterone rip off supplements. Oh yeah, that and the BIBLE investing scam!!.

The whole talk radio thing/Fox News thing has also been a large part of the demise of the conservative moment. It is an ugly face to the American voter and you can almost trace the decline of the GOP with the rise of talk radio. Talk radio and Fox makes them think that they are the majority of Americans even though imperical data does not support that. It all goes back to Karl Rove having the “real numbers” back in 2006.

AND…it was just exposed that these UBER hypocrite whores have to be PAID….MILLIONS by the political parties beyond what the idiots that own the radio stations pay them to carry the teabagger and repugnantklan water for them on their “shows”!!!!!!